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Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Sometimes the Human Web... ...the worldwide web... can hit you with a pathos and immediacy that nothing else can. You click idly through Google News, and there's a little story about the death of a young professor at Cornell in the crash of his Cessna near Steuben Lake. You Google his name and there's his personal webpage -- some photos, some inspiring quotations, his brief career. Here's one of his quotations, from Theodore Roosevelt: It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither defeat nor victory. |